Recently Canyon Ridge Christian Church launched a defense of their partnership with Uganda’s Martin Ssempa. Despite the fact that Willow Creek Association expressed regret over their 2007 award to Ssempa for his AIDS work and Rick Warren’s condemnation of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Pastor Kevin Odor told his congregation a couple of Sundays ago that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and Rev. Ssempa had been misrepresented by the media. The Canyon Ridge leadership seems to take encouragement that Martin Ssempa leads a coalition of clergy which recommended that the death penalty be dropped from the bill. However, Ssempa expressed no reservations about the death penalty when the bill was first introduced, saying he fully supported it. He has not explained why he changed his views.
Some of these recommendations were delivered to Rick Warren after he forcefully denounced the bill in December. I first saw this document in March after Martin Ssempa’s appearance on the Line of Fire show. I was told at that time by host Michael Brown that the document was not for public consumption and so I did not publish it. Now, a link to the first page of the recommendations is on the Canyon Ridge website. However, they failed to produce the entire document and so I thought it might be good to see clearly what has satisfied Canyon Ridge. Despite the length, I am publishing the whole thing after the break with commentary to follow.
To the uninitiated, these recommendations might look reasonable. However, without the actual bill, one might overlook that the UJCC did not make any recommendations about the part of the bill calling for life in prison for homosexual touching. Here is the section (S2) without any recommended changes:
2. The offence of homosexuality.
(1) A person commits the offence of homosexuality if-
(a) he penetrates the anus or mouth of another person of the same sex with his penis or any other sexual contraption;
(b) he or she uses any object or sexual contraption to penetrate or stimulate sexual organ of a person of the same sex;
(c) he or she touches another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.
(2) A person who commits an offence under this section shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment for life.
Please note that there is nothing in the proposed bill which specifies ages of the people involved or requires coercion to violate this section. Also, recall that the Introduction to the bill says this:
The object of this Bill is to establish a comprehensive consolidated legislation to protect the traditional family by prohibiting (i) any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex;
And then also keep in mind that touching (see subsection 2c) is defined as:
“touching” includes touching—
(a) with any part of the body;
(b) with anything else;
(c) through anything;
and in particular includes touching amounting to penetration of any sexual organ, anus or mouth.
The plain language of Section 2 describes consensual relations. This was confirmed to me by Martin Ssempa’s colleague Charles Tuhaise, President of the National Association of Social Work – Uganda and Parliamentary researcher. The Uganda Joint Christian Council did not make any recommendations to change this section (Section 2). The UJCC recommends a change to the definitions section and then begins making recommendation to Section 3 (S.3) Aggravated Homosexuality. Based on what Canyon Ridge provided, a church goer would not get the full picture. See below for the full UJCC document.
